Celebrating 10 years on Mars, using Google to find time travelers: The Week in Science

On Sol 84 (Oct. 31, 2012), NASA's Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture this set of 55 high-resolution images, which were stitched together to create this full-color self-portrait. The mosaic shows the rover at "Rocknest," the spot in Gale Crater where the mission's first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover. (COURTESY PHOTO NASA/JPL rcvd Nov. 2012)

The Mars Exploration Rovers celebrate a decade on Mars, even though one stopped in 2009, seismologists think they have an answer to why strange lights sometimes appear before an earthquake, researchers from Tokyo make objects float around using sound, two physicists used Google to try and find time travelers, and more, this week in science.

EARTHQUAKE LIGHTS ARE … REAL?

A team of seismologists have come up with a hypothesis behind the phenomenon known as “Earthquake lights.” YouTube users are quick to think of UFO’s or other supernatural explanations for the lights, which have been documented as far back as 89 B.C., but this team has come up with a more down to Earth explanation. They determined that the majority of these sightings have occurred on or near rifts, with 97 percent occurring next to subvertical faults. Negatively charged oxygen atoms break up in the pre-earthquake stresses, and oxygen ions are released. These then ionize in the air forming a plasma. And, assuming the plasma state, an instability can develop leading to an explosion of visible light. At least, according to their hypothesis. Or maybe it’s still aliens.

LEVITATING ON SOUND

Ever listen to a great song, get absorbed into the music, and just, feel like you’re floating on air? Researchers at the University of Tokyo are taking that feeling and making it a reality. In what they are calling Three-Dimensional Mid-Air Acoustic Manipulation, they have precisely aligned several speakers and pumped in ultrasonic waves to control the position of tiny beads, a screw, plastic, match heads and water. The idea isn’t a new one, scientists have been toying with ultrasonic levitation for a while. But where those could only lift an object up, this new experiment gives full control over the object in 3 dimensions. Watch the video at left, or on YouTube.

SEARCHING FOR TIME TRAVELERS

A pair of physics professors set out to determine if we’ve been visited by time travelers from the future. The abstract of their study explains why: “Time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travelers.” I suppose we’ve all just assumed they would jump out and tell us like John Titor did. They searched for time travelers by scouring the internet for things that existed out of time with their events. Queries like “Pope Francis” or “Comet ISON” shouldn’t exist prior to 2013, as the new Pope is the first of his name and ISON was discovered, and lost, in the same year. Unfortunately, “no time travelers were discovered,” according to the paper, available for pre-print on arXiv. Slate said that sentence “must rank as an early front-runner for most disappointing sentence of 2014.”

COMETS OF 2014

Comet ISON has come and gone, burning up near the sun at the end of 2013, but there are still other comets out there. 2014 will bring a few within binocular viewing range for those of us in the northern hemisphere, one may even be bright enough to see with the naked eye if you can escape somewhere away from the city lights. Universe Today has a roundup of possible comets to see in 2014. They note that “in 2013, 64 new comets were found, 14 of them by amateur astronomers,” so point your telescopes skyward.

LIST OF YEAR END LISTS

Rather than list off my favorite science stories from last year (Voyager, ISON, all things Curiosity), I thought that I would instead provide the top lists from a few of my favorite sites and a few others I found noteworthy.

First, from Altmetric, a tool that helps categorize and rank research based on non-traditional methods, comes a list of the top 100 research papers that received the most mention online. They tracked social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others, mixed in articles from news sources and blogs, and then spit out a ranking.

Phys.org didn’t create a wrap up of their biggest news of the year. They created a feed simply titled “Best of 2013.” Unfortunately, it seems to go on forever, so may just be a collection of all works from 2013. They did, however, give a look at space stories to watch for in 2014. Some of the highlights include the European Space Agency’s Rosetta lander touching down on the surface of a comet in August, space tourism finally taking off with Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, SpaceX continuing to send satellites into orbit and the testing of their heavy Falcon 9 rocket late in the year and more.

The Week in Science takes a look at new discoveries, new technologies and new breakthroughs from every discipline. There are many each week that I can’t include and more still that I didn’t even see. Did you read about something cool that is science related? Send me a link at daniel.aitken@langnews.com and maybe it will make it on next weeks list.